


you get eyes like flashlights

by CaptainKyburz



Category: Mission: Impossible, Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Genre: Dealing with Ethan Hunt: the Fic, Gen, Multi, Other, Post-Ghost Protocol, Pre-Rogue Nation, Slice of Life, Trauma, slightly shippy if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 02:16:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5479571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainKyburz/pseuds/CaptainKyburz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What’s the mission?” Brandt has kept the phone close at hand since Seattle, more than half prepared for whatever the IMF is throwing at them this time.</p><p>“Oh, good, you took the phone. Was hoping you would,” Benji—who is decidedly not Ethan—says. “And yeah, fair warning, Ethan doesn’t just call with missions. He’s a big fan of spontaneous rock climbing as a team-building exercise.” Figures.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you get eyes like flashlights

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Richard Siken's poem Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out. The alternate title was 'a fish that talks', which should tell you something about this fic.

“What’s the mission?” Brandt has kept the phone close at hand since Seattle, more than half prepared for whatever the IMF is throwing at them this time. Honestly, he’d expected the call to come sooner; two days is a long break, even if it’s been filled with tidying up everything that was left undone while Ghost Protocol was enacted.

“Oh, good, you took the phone. Was hoping you would,” Benji—who is decidedly not Ethan—says, in a voice that’s too damn cheerful for this ungodly hour of the morning. No matter how long Brandt works in various areas of intelligence, he doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to the hours. “And yeah, fair warning, Ethan doesn’t just call with missions. He’s a big fan of spontaneous rock climbing as a team-building exercise.” Figures. “Dragged me and Declan and Zhen out a bunch of times. He also does not actually have his pilot’s license. Whatever he tries to tell you, practical experience is _not_ the same thing as official certification.”

“Thanks for the heads up,” Brandt says, disconnecting before he can find out any more random Ethan Hunt trivia. Then, he stares into his cereal bowl in a vain hope that soy milk and soggy gluten-free Cheerios can explain the meaning of all this.

+

Ethan actually does call forty two hours later, sounding just a little bit shot-at. Again, figures. It’s a conference call with Jane and Benji, too, so Brandt resists the urge to put the phone down and sigh for a moment. Instead, he memorizes the complex instructions Ethan rattles off, and packs a bag for Costa Rica. (As if he’d ever get to go there on _vacation_.)

Somehow, this mission is almost as much of a shit storm as the last one. At least this time he finishes it by having beer with his team instead of sitting beside them in a hospital room, praying Ethan won’t slip into a coma before he can confess.

Two sheets to the wind, Brandt wonders why he ever liked field work.

( _Oh_ , he thinks, three weeks later, slinking from one shadow to another in the darkness with the knowledge that Ethan and Jane are next to him and Benji is watching over them all like a benevolent overlord, _this is why_.)

+

He still has dreams about Croatia. Only, this time, they end with him bursting through the door to find Ethan and Julia calmly sipping bourbon with both his team and the entire Serbian hit squad. One of his agents, Davidson—who was very good at surveillance and a friends-with-benefits _thing_ —pours Brandt a drink and invites him to sit down. He still wakes up in a cold sweat.

In order to figure out whatever that fuck that whole thing means, Brandt would likely need more therapists than the entire IMF could afford. Probably something about trust issues, but he knew that already. And he knows Ethan will save his life, so it doesn’t really matter, does it?

It does, of course it does, but Brandt is a lying liar who lies on his psych evaluations so they won’t take Ethan (and the rest of his team) away from him.

+

“Will, William, Willy Will Will,” Ethan slurs, half draped over his shoulder. _Brandt_ resists the urge to punch him. They’re on the floor now, backs pressed up against the chipped and peeling paint of the safehouse’s wall, but Ethan is still clinging to him like a drugged, overly affectionate monkey.

Just as he thinks the other agent has finally gone to sleep, Ethan pokes him in the shoulder. “You don’t let us call you Will. You don’t like us very much, do you? I know why you don’t like me, but why don’t you like Benji and Jane? They didn’t ruin your li—”

“No,” Brandt says firmly, “no, we’re not doing this right now.” Or ever. “The extraction team will be here in three hours, so just shut up, _Hunt_ , because we are not talking about this.” Whatever Ethan was dosed with has made him both talkative and higher than a kite. It’s lucky Brandt got them out when he did, otherwise Ethan might be babbling to an extremist—always extremists, what the hell—right now. Or, maybe not, because Ethan always seems to have a plan or a way out or a _something_. He’s always the one in control, pulling the puppet’s strings.

“I’m sorry that I’m not sorry,” Ethan whispers into his suit collar before finally passing out. Even after his breathing has evened out into a rate of deep, unfakeable unconsciousness, Brandt doesn’t let himself be upset. He also doesn’t think about the fact that before Croatia, he was never Brandt. Will, always Will. Especially to his teammates.

The next day, while Ethan attempts to recover from his truth serum-induced hangover and Benji shows off an embarrassing video of him telling them all how much he loves them with some very impressive and flattering verbiage, they make eye contact. Ethan smiles at him, awkwardly. Brandt didn’t even know Ethan could be awkward. It’s a start.

+

Brandt dies. That is a lie; actually, Brandt only almost, almost, bleeds out, but he’s close enough to the bright light at the end of the tunnel to hear it say, _Will, Will, you’re safe now, it’s all okay, mission accomplished, Brandt, you did it_. Later, he realizes it was Ethan whispering to him as Jane broke half of the road laws in Georgia (the country) to get him to a hospital on time. Brandt then tries very, very hard not to think about the implications of Ethan being the one who tells him it’s okay. He fails.

While unconscious, Brandt has the Bourbon Dream again. Only, this time, he sits down and sips his drink and smiles at Julia Meade. She and Ethan hold hands. Davidson tells shitty jokes to Will that make them all laugh.

Then, the whole scene sort of turns into a Salvador Dali painting (but on fire) and melts away to reveal his grandmother’s front porch. Nana Dee—the toughest old broad he’s ever met, god forgive him for even thinking that—polishes a high caliber sniper rifle. When she tells him to be more careful, Will nods. Brandt asks for more lemonade, please.

He wakes up to the smell of bleach under layers of lemon deodorizer and Ethan slumped sideways in a hospital chair. “We stayed in shifts,” Ethan explains when he doesn’t ask. Brandt nods, they smile.

Benji and Jane and Ethan bring takeout and 80’s movies to his apartment.

(Benji does his best impression of the kid from Risky Business. There’s an honest-to-god Benji-shaped dent in Brandt’s wall. Ethan knows every single line from The Breakfast Club. Jane makes them watch Top Gun. Twice.

“You know,” Ethan says, completely deadpan, “maybe if Maverick listened to Iceman about flying more carefully, Goose wouldn’t be dead.” The entire team stares at him, incredulous, as Ethan takes a judgmental sip of his beer. They last a whole ten seconds before cracking up, laughing so hard Brandt thinks he maybe pulls a few stitches.

“You jackass,” he says, and punches Ethan in the arm.)

+

His teammates spend nearly half the flight staring at Brandt. He gets it, he really does; they were all witnesses to his miniature freak-out while jumping down into the computer, but Brandt can do this. All he has to do is tune out the part of his mind which was specially trained to calculate the odds of failure in any scenario. It’s harder than it sounds.

It’s not at all cocky to say Brandt was one of the best analysts of the 21st century. He was, because he could look at any situation and play out all the scenarios from best to worst. He was also rarely wrong. 

_Best: their parachutes open under the radar without complications and they infiltrate the compound undetected. Worst: one or more of them is injured enough to incapacitate but not kill and is then captured and likely interrogated._ The usual: something goes horribly wrong and they deal with it. After all, they aren’t the Easy Mission Force.

Brandt is the second person out of the plane. Jane, him, Ethan; Benji stays behind to hack and isn’t as disappointed about it as he pretends to be. The rush of adrenaline and icy Latvian air crashes over him like a wave, and for a moment, Brandt stops thinking about the odds of failure.

+

As it turns out, Ethan (fucking) Hunt is kind of a jackass. He’s also an enormous dork who probably has a kink for risking his own life, but yeah, kind of a jackass. Especially on team bonding exercises and when Brandt heeds Benji’s advice and doesn’t let him fly the plane. (The jury’s still out on whether or not spontaneous rock climbing will become a thing, but at this point Brandt kind of enjoys the will-he-won’t-he suspense.) Ethan is a jackass and he pouts and jumps off of surfaces that no sane human being should jump off of. It’s amusingly normal.

Brandt also wishes he had known about it _years_ ago.

As a trainee and junior agent, he’d been an avid consumer of Ethan-related gossip. It was hard not to be. The man was a living legend who’d done more in ten years than most IMF agents did in a lifetime. (He was also devastatingly handsome.) But this was normal; the IMF handed out hero worship crushes on Ethan like candy, because no one knew he was a dry-witted, dorky jackass who just happened to have a startlingly intense stare.

In the beginning, there was the crush. Then there was Croatia and Russia and Dubai and Mumbai and Seattle and Brandt’s feelings toward Ethan transformed from hero worship to a guilt-awe-fear mixture and back again. It was fucking confusing until he actually got to know the man behind the legend. Don’t get him wrong, Brandt would probably still fuck Ethan if offered the opportunity, but everyone on the team would, so it’s not an issue or anything. The man just draws people to him like moths to a flame. A flame that is, apparently, a fan of campy movies with bad CGI and ridiculous stunts.

So yeah, Ethan is a jackass, but now he’s become Brandt’s friend.

+

Heights bother Brandt. Enclosed spaces, on the other hand, do not, which is why he immediately volunteers to crawl through a kilometer of drainage pipe while Ethan and Jane infiltrate the party above. Well, not immediately, but there’s no hesitation in his voice when the plan calls for a tunneler and he steps up.

Which is why he is able to hear Ethan and Jane and even Benji being captured, but can’t do anything about it.

Brandt closes his eyes and tries to breathe. He fails. A handful of punches to incapacitate them, and then every single one of his team’s communications devices is removed so Brandt loses the comfort of at least knowing whether or not they’re being tortured, or are even still alive. The last thing he hears is Ethan admitting to the men that they’re alone, they’ve got no backup, it’s the truth, he swears, no one else is co—.

Brandt closes his eyes and tries to breathe. He fails. Brandt closes his eyes and tries to breathe. He fails. He fails. He fails. He fails he fails he fails he fails he—Brandt breathes. The chilled metal ridges of the drainage pipe come back into focus around him, irregular pressure on his forearms and calves. His backpack sits like a comforting weight. Brandt does a quick mental inventory of his equipment and counts to 1000 by perfect squares as he crawls.

“Glad you could make it,” Jane quips when he kicks down the door.

+

Sometimes, Ethan disappears off the grid for days at a time. Brandt isn’t sure whether it’s actually for spontaneous rock climbing or if he’s staring longingly (from a half-kilometer away) at his wife who, yeah, isn’t dead, he’s finally getting used to that one.

Once, he invites Brandt with him, and they sit at that same café in Seattle, drinking beers and laughing more freely than Brandt ever thought he would.

+

His doors are locked, his widows are secured, there are no clear lines of sight to places Brandt likes to rest. It’s not paranoia or cynicism; it’s just the way Brandt is. He’s seen Ethan and Jane’s places, they’re the same way. Benji’s not so much, but it’s forgivable; he hasn’t been part of this special brand of hell as long as they have.

During his first few months as Chief Analyst, Brandt constantly carried cyanide on his person. He wasn’t suicidal enough to use it without reason, no matter how much he wanted to in the week or so after Croatia, before he was transferred to the Information Analysis department. No, Brandt carried it because he was smart. Smart enough to understand that knowing information less than a dozen people in the United States had access to would make him a target, and he would rather die than betray his country.

Now, there’s an even higher chance that Brandt will be captured and tortured than when he wasn’t in the field, but he doesn’t carry cyanide.

“We’d do it for you, if we had to,” Ethan had said, after Brandt explained in a matter of fact way what going into the field with him would mean. Jane and Benji both looked slightly sick—Ethan would too, except that he has the best poker face out of them all—but they nodded in agreement. “But only if we had no other option. None of us want to…” he waved his hand in an all-encompassing gesture, then settled that same hand on Brandt’s shoulder. “We’ll make sure it doesn’t come to that.”

Strangely, it made Brandt like them all a little more.

+

Jane is reassigned first, off to save the world as leader of a new team. They all knew it was coming. She’s good, too good to be stuck as Ethan’s second in command, no matter how much they all wish she could stay. Then, Benji’s loaned out to other teams on various missions, because apparently an able-bodied field agent who can double as a tech guy is in high demand. They knew that one was coming too.

What they don’t see coming is this: the Acting Secretary cracks under the pressure of an investigation into the IMF. Technically, as Chief Analyst and the highest ranked remaining agent of a quickly crumbling IMF (say that five times fast), Brandt is now Acting Secretary. He’s also far too valuable (and busy) to run around in the field with Ethan, risking his life—and his entire organization.

So Brandt returns to a desk job, this time with a slightly higher salary that makes up for the lack of hazard pay.

Ethan gets a litter of junior agents, fresh out of training, and yeah, there’s the hero worship crush thing in full swing. It’s actually kind of funny how oblivious to it he is, now that Brandt’s no longer a victim of Ethan’s charismatic tractor beam.

Life goes on, Brandt snarks to a room full of people who could have his head if they wanted. (Ethan and Benji would be so proud of him.) It’s not good, or _enough_ , but it’s something.

+

“The package is _on the plane_!” And then _Ethan_ is on the plane, and dear god Benji open the goddamn door. This is, unsurprisingly, not the worst thing that’s happened to them all week. (Operation Let’s Get the Band Back Together and Save the World isn’t going so well.) Finally, it’s done, and Brandt gives in to the urge to place a hand over his eyes and sigh in post-adrenaline-high relief.

 _Ah well_ , he thinks, _William Brandt, this is your life. Now go pick up the bloody pieces and enjoy it._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed my attempt to rectify the serious lack of fic about my precious son Brandt and all his Issues.
> 
> As always, comments/reviews give me life, and I can be found on tumblr at [ethaanhunt](http://ethaanhunt.tumblr.com/).


End file.
